Rebecca still had not recovered from the contrast between that enormous black silhouette and the young face beneath it when a shriek of metal suddenly ripped through the dead carriage.
ROOOOM—!!
The Ecliptic Express, motionless in the rainy night until now, suddenly roared back to life.
Wheels ground violently against rusted rails, throwing sheets of brilliant sparks as a massive, unexpected surge of acceleration tore through the dining car.
The train had not merely restarted.
It was accelerating with brutal force.
“Ah!” Rebecca cried out as the red carpet seemed to slide beneath her feet under the violent inertia.
She lost her balance completely and pitched straight forward.
Her face was about to meet the splintered back of a chair crushed by the scorpion when a hand in a black tactical glove shot out at astonishing speed.
Leon never moved his feet.
He simply reached with one arm and caught the rear collar of Rebecca’s green S.T.A.R.S.
ballistic vest in his broad fingers.
The heavy armor anchored him to the floor.
With no visible effort, he lifted the lightweight young woman completely off her feet and set her securely into an untouched leather seat beside him.
“Hold on.” Leon rolled his wrist and looked down the narrow corridor at a violently swaying connecting door.
He turned back, not a trace of panic on his rain-streaked face.
“If this tin can wants to take us for a ride, we should compare notes first.
What team are you with?
And why were you hanging around with a prisoner in stripes who just got cut in half by a giant bug?” Rebecca clutched the armrests, chest heaving, and dragged in a breath.
“I’m Rebecca Chambers, medic for S.T.A.R.S.
Bravo Team!
I graduated and joined on June thirtieth!
We were sent into the Arklay Mountains to investigate the recent string of bizarre cannibalistic murders!” “Cannibal murders?” Leon raised an eyebrow.
One boot, still dotted with cloudy scorpion fluid, shifted half a step on the carpet.
“Yes!” Rebecca swallowed and continued.
“Our helicopter engine suddenly malfunctioned and we made an emergency landing in the forest!
Then we found a military transport vehicle destroyed nearby.
The MPs escorting it were all dead.
The man that monster just killed was Billy Coen—a death-row prisoner convicted of murdering twenty-three people!” Leon tilted his head slightly and looked again at the wreckage in prison stripes lying in the corner.
“A death-row inmate who killed twenty-three people, only to become a mutant bug’s midnight snack out here?” His broad armored shoulders rose in a shrug.
“That’s karma with good timing.
Still, if these terrorists can raise something that big, they’re more capable than I expected.” “What terrorists?!” Rebecca shot to her feet and pointed at the bodies on the far side of the car.
“Those aren’t people!
They’re dead!
They don’t breathe!
I watched dried-out corpses stand up and bite someone’s throat apart!” Leon turned, his broad back blocking most of the light.
“Rookie, you’re too wound up.” He picked up the iron helmet from the table.
“It’s probably a new hallucinogen, maybe some PCP derivative.
These lunatics overdosed until their skin ulcerated and their pain receptors burned out, and now they’ve got extreme biting aggression.” “Who do you think I am?
I actually have a degree!” Rebecca shook with anger.
“You think I can’t tell a dead body from a living person?” “Captain Wesker sent me here to clear this base.” Leon brought the helmet toward the armored collar.
“As for no breathing?
In the dark, surrounded by blood and stink, you were probably scared enough to check the wrong pulse.
Next time, use the carotid.
Don’t waste time feeling for breath.” “You are impossible!” Rebecca stamped a boot, making her green vest bounce.
“Did you somehow miss the giant scorpion?
You think drugs make something grow like that?” “Extreme people have extreme hobbies.” Leon fitted the helmet closer to its locking ring.
“Grow a mutant pet in a basement with radiation or chemical waste and they probably think it’s a badge of honor.
I’ve even seen somebody keep an adorable two-meter alligator alive in a sewer.” The argument did not get any further.
BANG!
CRACK— The train lurched again.
Both connecting doors at either end of the dining car burst inward under enormous force, spraying shattered glass across the red carpet.
A choking stench flooded in.
More than a dozen “passengers”—some in train uniforms, some in suits or long dresses—staggered into the narrow aisle.
Filthy blood stained their corpse-spotted faces.
Gray-white eyes fixed on the center of the carriage.
Rebecca sucked in a breath.
Her hands went cold as she raised the Beretta toward the conductor-uniformed zombie in front and pulled the trigger.
Click-click—click-click!
The firing pin snapped against an empty chamber.
Empty.
She had drained the magazine while guarding against Billy and the first zombies.
Rebecca’s arms sagged and her eyes closed.
With the dead pouring in from both ends of the narrow carriage, there was nowhere to run.
Click.
A mechanical latch locked beside her.
Leon sealed the iron skull onto the armored collar and opened the valve.
Heavy breathing with a mechanical rasp filled the car.
“Stay behind me, rookie.” Leon closed his free hand into a fist, black carbon-steel knuckles scraping together.
“I’ll show you what proper riot-control procedure looks like.” He left the greatsword where it was.
In a train aisle this cramped, a long weapon would only get in the way.
Against this crowd, hand-to-hand was more efficient.
A male zombie with black blood caked around its mouth climbed over a table and lunged at Leon’s face.
Leon rooted both boots in the carpet.
His massive frame did not budge.
His abdomen tightened, driving the right arm wrapped in heavy plate forward in a brutally simple straight punch.
BANG!
CRACK!
The steel knuckles struck the zombie’s face, force punching through rotten flesh.
Its nose, jaw, and cervical spine shattered together in a rapid chain of fractures.
The body seemed to pause in midair, then flew more than three meters backward into the crowd, bowling down several others.
“That hallucinogen has nasty side effects.
It’s lowering their bone density too,” Leon observed from behind the visor.
Two more zombies closed from either side, mouths trailing rotten flesh as they bit at his arms and shoulders.
Leon did not bother dodging.
Human bite force was not going through a shell of high-carbon steel.
SKRRK!
Teeth scraped across black plate and several shattered on the spot.
Leon threw both arms outward, then hooked them around the two zombies’ necks in a double clothesline.
He inhaled, lifted the rigid chest plate slightly, then violently slammed both trapped heads inward.
THOOM!!
The two rotten skulls collided directly in front of his chest.
Dark blood burst outward and painted the black bomb suit.
Leon released them.
Two headless bodies slid to the floor.
“These thugs have complete brain death.
No point attempting resuscitation.” Ahead, the remaining zombies had packed together in the aisle, stumbling over one another as they surged toward the living.
One punch per head is too inefficient in here.
Leon strode toward the fastest zombie in front.
Just as blackened fingernails reached for his visor, he dropped low and seized the zombie’s left ankle.
His fingers tightened.
With a low grunt, Leon lifted the seventy- or eighty-kilogram corpse completely upside down.
“Make some room, rookie!” Before the words were finished, he turned the zombie into a human flail.
Pivoting from the waist, Leon swung the body through a half-circle inside the narrow corridor.
The inverted corpse smashed into the tightly packed group behind it.
BOOM—CRASH!
Raw impact detonated inside the cramped space.
Bones cracked in rapid succession and heavy bodies hit the floor as row after row of zombies were clubbed and swept from their feet.
Broken limbs and torsos carpeted the aisle.
Leon discarded the zombie in his hand, its skeleton thoroughly pulverized, and beckoned with one gauntlet toward the stunned Rebecca behind him.
“Come on.
Follow the path I made.” He marched forward, heavy steel boots trampling the fallen without hesitation.
CRACK!
SPLAT!
Rotten rib cages collapsed beneath his boots.
Rebecca picked her way through the gaps behind the broad black wall of his back.
They crushed their way through two cars before stopping at a heavy pneumatic steel door.
Red lettering above it read ENGINE CAB.
“Locked.” Leon shoved it once.
The reinforced electronic lock did not move, and the sensor panel beside it flashed red.
Rebecca leaned closer and looked around.
“We need the conductor’s magnetic keycard!
Maybe it’s back in the dining car, or one of the upstairs compartments…” “Looking for a key takes too long.
This train is driving crazier than a junkie on a binge, and for all we know there’s a cliff ahead.” Leon cut her off.
He stepped forward until his armored body nearly touched the door.
Both iron-gloved hands forced themselves into the tight seam between the pneumatic panels.
Rebecca’s eyes widened.
“Are you insane?
That’s a hydraulically locked door!” Leon did not answer.
He staggered his feet, bent his knees slightly, and pulled outward.
SKREEE—GRAAAANG!
Steel warped.
A growl sounded in Leon’s throat as brute force attacked a door designed to require a high-pressure pneumatic system.
Sparks spat from the destroyed electronic lock.
The reinforced panels were physically torn apart until a person-sized opening yawned between jagged, deformed aluminum edges.
“Standard forced entry complete.” Leon let go and dusted metal filings from his palms.
“After you, medic.” Rebecca stepped through the mangled doorway and swept her eyes across the empty cab.
Beyond the windshield, storm and darkness streamed backward at terrifying speed.
Instrument lights flashed chaotically across the console, and the central speedometer was buried in the red beyond 120 kilometers per hour.
“No driver?
The control system’s completely out of control!” She rushed forward and searched the panel with both hands.
Her face went white.
“The main braking system is destroyed!
Somebody smashed the air-pressure line!” Rebecca spun around.
“At this speed we’re heading straight for a mountain curve beside a cliff!
If we don’t trigger the emergency brake within three minutes, centrifugal force will derail the train and tear it apart!” “Then hit the emergency brake.” Leon folded his arms.
“Don’t tell me they smashed the backup too.” Rebecca grabbed a maintenance manual beside the controls and flipped through it rapidly.
“It still works, but this model needs two operators for emergency braking!” She stabbed a finger at the instructions.
“One person has to pull the master air valve here at the front while another enters a code at the control panel in the last car at the same time.
That’s the only way to activate the magnetic rail brakes!” They looked at each other.
Six or seven sealed passenger cars lay between the engine and the rear—and at that moment, those cars were full of newly awakened “terrorists.” From the aisle came the dense, low moans of the zombies they had left behind, crowding toward the cab again.
Leon was silent for half a second.
Then he turned and kicked over the corpse of a train-security officer lying across the entrance.
As the body rolled, a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun on a tactical sling fell from beneath the vest.
Leon flicked it up with his toe and caught it in one hand.
He tested the weight, racked the fore-end one-handed, then tossed the fully loaded weapon toward Rebecca at the console.
She barely caught it.
The shotgun’s weight dragged her arms down.
“Listen, medic.” Leon’s voice cut through the noise from behind his helmet.
“Take that shotgun and use the roof maintenance duct or the side passage to reach the rear.
Run whenever you can.
Don’t stop and waste ammunition.
Once you’re at the rear controls, wait for my radio call.
We’ll count down from three and hit the brakes together.” Rebecca hugged the shotgun in trembling hands and stared at the shifting shadows outside the door.
“But…
the whole way is full of those mon—no, those terrorists!” she said.
“How am I supposed to get through alone?” Leon stepped closer and laid one enormous steel glove on her narrow shoulder.
“Remember the S.T.A.R.S.
patch you’re wearing, rookie.
You swore an oath when you put on that vest.
Your job now is to save this train.
Don’t embarrass Captain Wesker.” Leon turned and strode back toward the cab door he had ripped open.
The black-steel Doorstop stood in the corner.
He closed one hand around the grip, hauled the slab free, shook yellow-brown scorpion fluid from it, and rested the greatsword diagonally across his scratched black shoulder plate.
Facing the dark mass of corpses surging toward the door, Leon tipped his head slightly.
“As for the ones in our way…” “…leave the exorcism to me.” Then he pushed through the broken door and launched a savage countercharge straight into the packed horde.
Rebecca bit her lower lip and watched the black silhouette disappear beneath the monsters.
She drew a deep breath, turned, shouldered the shotgun, and climbed toward the maintenance passage leading onto the roof.
The countdown had begun.